As the Owl of Minerva takes flight over the era of the pandemic, one or two things come sharply into view that might have been occluded when we were still among the trees of daily events. One is that… | Continue reading
Generational critique almost inevitably focuses on two targets: boomers and millennials. Boomers, according to their younger critics, bought up all the housing when prices were lower and then settled… | Continue reading
“I am writing a book,” says the man at the drinks party, in the old Peter Cook cartoon. “Neither am I,” replies his companion. Still makes me laugh. But would now work with “I am reading a book”, too. | Continue reading
The only public medical clinic in the UK authorised to prescribe puberty blockers to people under 18 was ordered to close this week, further cementing the UK’s reputation as a centre of “gender… | Continue reading
The German composer Richard Wagner wrote seven operas in his mature style. I’ve been going to see them in live performances for the last forty years or so – my very first was Die Walküre at English… | Continue reading
This article is taken from the June 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we're offering five issues for just £10. At a recent “comedy” show in Los Angeles… | Continue reading
If you believe that there are only two sexes, male and female, you may well be a bigot. And if you choose to express that belief on social media you deserve to be fired. This is the upshot of a ruling… | Continue reading
Obedience Is Freedom by Jacob Phillips The title of Jacob Phillips’s new book Obedience Is Freedom might remind one of the Oceanian slogans “War Is Peace” and “Ignorance Is Strength”… | Continue reading
The Mona Lisa is the most famous woman in the world — she just happens to be a painting | Continue reading
This article is taken from the March 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we're offering five issue for just £10. If you’ve ever wondered how letters were… | Continue reading
Feminist campaign group Fair Play for Women have just lost their case on appeal at the Court of Session over the question of whether some people should be allowed to provide false information in… | Continue reading
How a panicking Cambridge institution obliterated the memory of one of its most famous sons… | Continue reading
‘‘No group is more dangerous,” growled Theodore Dalrymple in 2014, “than the disgruntled literate.” | Continue reading
Oh, I had been looking forward to seeing Terry Gilliam’s staging of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods at the Old Vic next year. Although Gilliam is best known as a film director… | Continue reading
There is something about Twitter that makes it almost impossible to resist not only making but publicising snap judgements. As soon as news broke that Sir David Amess MP had been stabbed… | Continue reading
You really have to feel for the poor people at Tourism Australia. Having spent decades happily if not particularly creatively pitching their product to the world with the time honoured formula of… | Continue reading
Have you ever watched a naughty video online? Have you ever asked Google your most private thoughts; or left a YouTube comment you’d rather your colleagues didn’t see? Well, Boris Johnson knows – and… | Continue reading
This article is taken from the July 2021 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we're offering five issue for just £10. Catherine Belton was a Moscow correspondent… | Continue reading
Andrew Doyle wonders why so many comedians are offended by the satire of Titania McGrath… | Continue reading
The whole history of the West is — to confound the simplicities of the woke — one gigantic act of “cultural appropriation”… | Continue reading
Mention Russian cinema to most people and they will, if anything, think of the sturm und drang of Eisenstein or the burdensome beauty of late Tarkovsky. Russian cinema, for most people, is a bit like… | Continue reading
This article is taken from the January/February 2021 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we're offering three issue for just £5. Polymathy thrives on an… | Continue reading
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 it took with it the East German State security force known as the ‘Stasi’. At the time of its demise, the Stasi employed 91,015 people and relied on 173… | Continue reading
Wikipedia is the most widely used source of information in the world, and a great deal has been written about its impact on public perception of certain topics. Wikipedia shapes both scientific… | Continue reading
Peter Hitchens says Covid masks are a potent symbol of the West’s headlong flight from Enlightenment values… | Continue reading
This article was taken from the September issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we're offering three issue for just £5. ‘‘When tyrannies take over it is because… | Continue reading
This book review was taken from the September issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we're offering three issue for just £5. A friend of mine has a brilliant idea. | Continue reading
Brutalism has seen a surge in interest among young people keen on bold uncompromising Modernist design. Whole books of moody photographic studies of concrete buildings are snapped up by fans of urban… | Continue reading
In 1973, Graham Greene wrote an introduction to a bookselling friend’s memoir. As Greene was one of the most respected writers of his day, this was no small gesture, but the author was also a… | Continue reading
It’s 850 years since that night when four knights murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s been a rocky old road for Thomas Becket despite hundreds of years as the poster-boy of the cult of saints… | Continue reading
I am writing these words at the beginning of June, but you should by now be looking back on the worst of the UK’s Covid-19 epidemic. History books will dissect every aspect of the disease and… | Continue reading
There is one rule about Twitter that is probably worth knowing about. As @maple-cocaine put it, “Each day on Twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it. | Continue reading
Before Jamie Oliver there was Henry Fielding. Like the Naked Chef, the Tom Jones author was worried about the diets of England’s children. There may not have been turkey twizzlers in the eighteenth… | Continue reading
To starry-eyed observers of China, so much about Xi Jinping screamed reformer. Did you know that he was fond of the underground work of the independent filmmaker Jia Zhangke? Or that his second wife… | Continue reading
A long month ago in 10 Downing Street, before public opinion (and Jeremy Hunt) turned against him, Sir Patrick Vallance was painstakingly clear that group immunity while sheltering the vulnerable is… | Continue reading
Of all the events in the history of British Isles from the Conquest to the present day perhaps none is quite so important to understand as the Reformation and, with that, to understand one of its main… | Continue reading
There were two bona fide Mrs Orwells: Eileen O’Shaughnessy, a psychology MA whom he married in 1936 and who perished on the operating table nine years later; and Sonia Brownell, maid of all work on… | Continue reading
There is a pandemic sweeping the globe and it has to be stopped. It is called “free speech”. I do not like Amber Rudd. She is a Tory (which makes her evil) and her name sounds like some kind of fungal… | Continue reading
Multi-volume biographies may seem Victorian as a concept and practice. In fact, they are far older, and the idea of a major biography goes back to the Classics and was thereafter… | Continue reading
Banksy has reached the level of Blue Chip Moderns and Old Masters in auction rooms, books of his art are in museum bookshops worldwide and his street paintings | Continue reading
Rock and roll will never die,” Sha-Na-Na insisted at Woodstock in 1969. “It won’t fade away.” But it did. Copyright, the golden seam that ran through the rock b | Continue reading
This was not supposed to happen. Not in the year 2029. A nuclear war, millions dead, firestorms, irradiated cities. How did we get here? | Continue reading
How long would it have taken for the 886,000 British men killed in the Great War to pass in procession down Whitehall? I think we should find out. The necessary volunteers should be… | Continue reading
Today pseudoscience is used to blacken the reputation of almost any new development. When fracking led to the possibility of cheap energy, environmental… | Continue reading
The Fat Activism movement is risking lives by suppressing research on obesity | Continue reading
One of the abiding pleasures of the history of art is its “whodunnit” aspect. It sometimes appears as if hardly a month goes by without some dramatic discovery, and seemingly it is… | Continue reading